How would Ed have dealt with Saddam Hussein?
Nothing became the new Labour leader less during his conference speech than his comments on Iraq. He put it thus: “many [Labour MPs] sincerely believed that the world faced a real threat. I criticise nobody faced with making the toughest of decisions… But I do believe we were wrong…to take Britain to war and we need to be honest about that.”
The implication, it seems, is that Ed Miliband did not believe Saddam Hussein’s regime posed a real threat to the world. His argument on this is loosely worded, but that seems the best interpretation. And it is a disturbing position for a leader of the opposition to take.
Miliband has used his opposition to the Iraqi intervention—an opposition which, allegedly, none of his political colleagues remembers him voicing—to cement support from an activist and trade union base which would
Brian Barder
I note that Mr Lloyd in his quotation from Ed Miliband’s passage on Iraq discreetly omits the reasons he gave for asserting that the war had been wrong: “Wrong because that war was not a last resort, because we did not build sufficient alliances and because we undermined the United Nations.” The first of those reasons is incontrovertible; it was known at the time to all those who nevertheless supported the war; it’s the reason for the refusal of the Security Council to authorise the use of force at that time; it’s why the war was contrary to international law, amounting to the crime of aggression (in the words of the deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Secretary at the time). In short, those 23 words of Mr Miliband probably constitute one of the most elegant and deadly indictments, not just of the war but also of those who supported it, ever uttered. No wonder you didn’t quote them, Mr Lloyd. “Glib”? I think not.
Brian Barder
http://www.barder.com/ephems/
Asim Abbas
You do talk a lot of rubbish!!
Rather than dissect all your rubbish points, I’ll leave it for someone more qualified than me…
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2010/09/iraq-iran-lloyd-obama-threat
Dave
I think John LLoyd’s support for pre-emptive armaggeddon in support of Israel and Middle-East peace is misguided and possibly counter-productive!
jonathan power
john:
thought u would like to see part of a letter i just received from hans blix commenting on my column on blair.
You wrote well about Blair. I spent much time during the past summer
preparing for the testimony I gave to the Chilcot commission. The timing for
the invasion was determined by several things. First, the military train was
ready, had a momentum that would have been hard to stop (even if the will
had been there, which it was not), keeping several hundred thousand men in
the desert in increasing heat waiting for inspectors’ reports was not much
of an option (even though Blair tried to get Washington agree to delays to
try a ‘bench mark’ approach).
Waiting was also risky as the evidence equation changed. Although we would
never have been able to declare that there were no wmd, as you cannot prove
the negative, we were able to say that we have carried out 700 inspections
at 500 sites and found hardly anything (but scrap) and we have been to
dozens of sites given to us by intelligence and found no wmd (only
conventional weapons.) With a few months more of inspections the doubts
about wmd would have been reinforced. Perhaps even more important was that
the ‘evidence’ presented by Washington and London was falling apart (the
Niger contract and the alumninum tubes, the mobile B-labs etc.)
Blair was a prisoner on the US military train. In the last moments he could
not jump off.
Asked last spring if he would have joined the war had he known that there
were no wmd, he replied that yes, he would, but would have had to “deploy”
(this was the word he used) different arguments: Saddam could rearm etc.
In a BBC interview after his book came out he said recently about Iran that
a nuclear weaponization must be stopped — if need be by arms…. In this
case he cannot grab the fig leaves that they used on Iraq: a series of old
SCouncil resolutions authorizing force. He is really endorsing preventive
war at a time when– fortunately — Obama is more cautious. But Blair is not
in tune with the British electorate on these matters.
I did not mean this to become a tour d’horizon, so I stop here to thank you
again for very stimulating columns. I attach two recent short pieces that I
have written for the NGO circuit — one on a nuclear weapon free zone for
the Middle East and another on the withdrawal of NATO tactical nuclear
weapons.
Best regards,